Mindless Ones

I’ve tried to hide from the truth, but wherever I go it finds me… whatever age I might claim to be, right here, right now, I’m an Internet Grampa.

As soon as a columnist finishes the first draft of an article bemoaning the hordes of trolls that lurk under every digital bridge, I’m knocking at their front door, ready to warn them that they’re at risk of demonising dissenting voices, that they might just be confusing those guys who’re always two clicks away from a rape threat with those who simply don’t want to bow down to the guy who wrote The IT Crowd.

Whenever a young man is about to serve up a freshly baked Game of Thrones meme, I’m limbering up so I’m ready to come crashing through the rafters like the world’s shitest Santa!  As soon as that image is sent out into the world, I’m there, covered in plaster dust but still willing to deliver a pointless lecture about the good old days when you needed more than thirty seconds on their phone and a snazzy font to contribute to a fandom.

And don’t think you’ve escaped my reign of tedium! Next time you like something that a casual acquaintance has posted online I’ll be there, tucked up in your jumper drawer, just waiting to have a conversation about why Livejournal was a better platform for conversation than whatever the fuck it is we’re using now.

To my fellow Internet Grandparents, all I can do is offer you condolences and love!  You’re at least as wrong as you are right, but like you I feel the pull of the copper-clad garden, and like you I’m not quite ready to give up on the whole damned thing!

But let’s go back a bit, see if we can figure out what the damage is and where it was done…

What’s The Story?

The Gotham City Stock Exchange is rocked by a series of bizarre trades, causing wild swings in stock prices

Can it really be 10 years?

10 years since reality glitched, flexed like a Russian gymnast and then dry-heaved a small barely-formed, mewling blog into being?

10 years since 4 plucky lads from Liverpool formed like Voltron to change the face of pop music forever?

10 years since the Nostalgialator was switched on?

10 years since Alan Moore coined the notion of ideaspace and Neil Gaiman started selling time-shares there?

10 years since the Space Shuttle Challenger was piloted into the Empire State Building by OJ Simpson and Steve Jobs, skull-fucked on Mezcal?

10 years since the dark portal Barbelith cracked open and 10,000 demons clawed their way into the world?

10 years since Stan Lee was revealed to be a crude automaton made up of a wig, some false teeth, a pigskin full of feathers and some rudimentary cords and pulleys, being psychically animated by a 13 year old girl in a coma in Reykjavik.

10 years since Grant Morrison and Alan Moore decided to settle their half-century grudge match once and for all with a bout of psychic wrestling in a cosmic version of the fireplace scene in Women in Love’ ?

10 years since Mark Millar retired from comics to set up his gulag/theme-park ‘Millarworld’ on a small island in the Pacific Rim, taking his inspiration from Miss Wonderstarr’s Kingdom in ‘Zenith Phase III’ (not the first time he’d rinsed Grant Morrison’s creative gland for the accumulation of his own filthy lucre)?

10 years since Frank Miller blew himself up creating a bomb from fertiliser, nitro-glycerine and ink, leaving only a Hiroshima style silhouette on his apartment wall?

10 years since Brian Michael Bendis finished his epic 300 issue run of ‘One-sided Telephone Conversation Comics’ and committed ritual seppuku outside SDCC?

10 years since David Bowie and Prince finally consummated their secret love affair and departed on their cosmic odyssey, leaving a pair of robot-replicas in their place to do their pop-bidding?

10 years since 2000AD changed it’s name to Tharg’s Olde Timey Phantastic Adventure Periodical?

10 years since reality was revealed to be a child’s drawing of a cow, with the word ‘PIG’ written underneath it?

10 years since Chris Ware finally admitted that what he really liked doing was was watching Adam Sandler’s mid-period comedies with his trousers round his ankles and his knackers in a bowl of raspberry jelly and that his next comic was going to be a 3-d exegesis on this sensation?

10 years since little Kieron Gillen was born?

10 years since the Quizzlertron gaines sentience and left for space to ask the ultimate question?

10 years since poutin’ Paul Pope was attacked by a rabid fan with an axe and chopped into hundreds of pieces, with each bloody piece gaining sentience and becoming a comic artist unto themselves (but with a different name)?

10 years since Garth Ennis had his nipples pierced and became a vegan?

10 years since the world realised that writing about pop culture and childhood ephemera was actually a renewable energy source, and set up enormous writing farms out at sea, with bearded 30-somethings manacled to computers, forced to strip-mine their memories for every fleeting observation or idea about a cartoon they watched when they were 7, until they collapsed, spent husks exhaling their last on a dog-eared copy of the X-Men?

10 years since all comics and pop-culture fans realised, in one blindingly simple spiritual roundhouse to the temple, that being a racist, sexist fuckwad was a waste of everyone’s time and they either mentally re-adjusted or walked themselves smartly off the nearest cliff.

10 years since Gary Lactus & The Beast Must Die won the Nobel Prize for inventing the podcast?

10 years since ‘Rob Liefield’ became an official state of mind rather than a person?

10 years of tears?

10 years of fears?

10 years without Tears for Fears?

10 years of steers, beers, tabloid smears,  grinding gears and Stephen Frears?

10 years since Bobsy, Adam/Zom, Amy Poodle, Gary Lactus, Botswana Beast and The Beast Must Die decided to risk it all on a gamble that would pay off in spades, bringing them riches and adoration beyond their wildest dreams; picking up sentient writing machines Illogical Volume and Andrew Hickey in their ideological trawler-net and adding them to the hive-mind; slotting in Mister Attack, Lord Nuneaton Savage, Maid of Nails and others whenever their weapons-specialisms were required; all in service of creating the One True Blog, a place of cultural and spiritual nourishment, a place where the greatest minds of their generation could dash themselves against the impervious face of Comics and the Almighty Neckbeard…a place where all are welcome, and no fan is left behind…unless they’re a chode. A place called Mindless Ones. A blog. An idea. A distraction. A commune. A cult. A recovery group. A house of ideas, a warehouse of broken dreams. A place with some of the best writing about comics that you’ll find on the internet. And when it comes to it, isn’t that what this big ol’ shook up mess we call life’s all about?

No? Well it’s all we’ve got.

It’s a blog eat blog world out there, with many a noble companion fallen by the wayside. Life is a hurricane of shit and sawdust, so the fact that we’re still even standing after 10 years fills like a reason to celebrate.So join us won’t you, as we present a month of relentless onanism, with new posts from us all, as well as some dredging up / curating some past forgotten gems and old favourite posts. There’s gold in them thar hills I tell you, gold!

MINDLESS ONES 4 EVER!!!!!

The most interesting thing we learn in issue two of Crisis on Infinite Earths is that the scope of the story is much wider than we might have originally supposed.

NICHOLAS KNICKERLESS IN A NICKEL NECKLACE ON A RHINOSOROUSOUS

The year is 2099.

Blurbs have been outlawed by the totalitarian US government.

Luckily we’re not in America so it’s fine.

Welcome to another sodding episode of SILENCE! your heroes Gary Lactus and The Beast Must Die are here with their unique brand of jealousy inducing chat from their aspirational lives.

After we celebrate The Beast Must Die’s Birthday they discuss anxiety dreams which look like they might be coming true. There’s some chat about the now dead Mark E Smith which segues into a moving song about music called Music Song. SILENCE! Because The Film’s Started this week actually has something to do with the nominal point of the podcast, comics as Beasty done watched The Image Revolution.

The Reviewniverse revels in Doom Patrol, Days Of Hate, BatMan: Creature Of The Night, more Atlas Comics, LIFE Brigade, Frank Miller’s Tales To Offend, Tainted, Dissonance, Valerian and the City Of A Thousand Planets, Vinegar Teeth, Legion, The Further Adventures of Nick Wilson, Assassinistas and Tales Designed to Thrizzle

That’ll do, surely.

@silencepod

@frasergeesin
@thebeastmustdie

[email protected]

What’s The Story?
Batman and Robin are alerted to a series of thefts, involving cat-related items

BUT DON’T DESPAIR, THIS DAY WILL BE THEIR DAMNEDEST DAY

Nah, nah. Nope. Nu-uh. No way. Noooooooo sirreeeee. Nup. No-ew. Nein, Not in the slightest. No thanks. Nup.

Not feeling this blurb today.

No.

<ITEM> It’s a magical week boys and girls! A special week. A SILENCE! week! And Gary Lactus & The Beast Must Die are here to build a city of comics for you to all live in.

<ITEM> Look I’m not even going to mess around – this is some seriously digressive ish. I mean…do these boys really think that this is anyway to run a podcast? Oh well – once more unto the breach…

<ITEM> Some cursory sponsorship, some in-depth discussion of Jamie Oliver and Sunday Brunch, and a bit of Dadmin. Then The Beast ushers in another ker-lassic episode of SILENCE!…Because the Film Has Started talking about Coherence, The Autopsy of Jane Doe and Kong of Skull Island.

<ITEM> Dragging their heels, the sadsack pair find themselves in the snowy wastes of the Anti-Reviewniverse! Then normal service resumes and they hit the Reviewniverse. ‘Discussed’ are Sooner or Later, Deadline, Jamie Hewlett, Nick Abadzis’ Dream Logic, Skidmarks by Ilya, Tundra, Tales From The Hyperverse, Hastings, Mister Miracle, 2000AD Christmas special, and somehow more.

Jeez that’ll do won’t it?

<ITEM>

@silencepod

@frasergeesin
@thebeastmustdie
@bobsymindless
@kellykanayama
[email protected]

What’s The Story?

The Archer, a Robin Hood-themed criminal who uses trick arrows to perform his crimes, has been stealing cash from the rich, including from Bruce Wayne, and then giving it away to get the public to support him.

(I stopped posting these a year and a bit ago, due to health stuff. I’m doing better now, so I’m going to post the ones that I only posted to Patreon here, then continue with the rest of the series as I intended to).

What’s The Story?

Batman and Robin are called out to investigate a distress call involving an ocean-going yacht on which is a new invention, only to find when they get there that the boat disappears – and Batman is attacked by an exploding shark!